Each month we offer a focus on a particular author or artist. Sometimes
we use this space to discuss a rising new talent or an established star, but we also like
to celebrate those who now live on only in the rich legacy of their books.. See the archive for focus pieces from previous months.

L. M. Montgomery

Anne of Green Gables had been around for a good 75 years when I first read it
in my early teens, after watching the 1985 PBS Wonderworks television adaptation of the
novel. This discovery couldn't have come at a better time in my life. I had recently moved
to a new home and school and felt utterly lost and depressed. Anne managed to save me from
"the depths of despair" as surely as Gilbert Blythe saved her from the leaky
flat during her disastrous dramatization of Elaine's death scene from Tennyson's Idylls
of the King. After devouring Anne of Green Gables and the other seven books about
Anne and her family, I moved on to the "Emily of New Moon" trilogy and every
other L. M. Montgomery work I could track down in my local public libraries. My very dear,
similarly aged cousin also discovered Anne at the same time, and together we reveled in
the idealized and old-fashioned settings. The school experiences and family life in those
novels were very different from our own angst-filled adolescence, yet we identified
strongly with Montgomery's heroines.

Indeed, it is Montgomery's expert handling of characterization that first comes to mind
when I consider the strengths of her work. Her main characters are always reassuringly
real. Adults are sometimes wrong and they admit it, children lose their tempers,
misbehave, and make mistakes but they are loved anyway. Her young heroines, often orphans
or underdogs, are passionate, dreamy, stubborn, smart, nature-loving, and not particularly
beautiful by conventional standards. They stand up for themselves and boldly pursue their
dreams, sometimes flying in the face of convention. Supporting characters are more often
caricatures but are so artfully and humorously drawn, so recognizable (the boorish
relatives who think they're clever, the beautiful classmate who's shallow and catty) that
we don't care.

Montgomery was also a master storyteller. Though sometimes her plots are a bit
contrived, they gracefully follow a clear, well-planned story arc, balancing tragedy and
humor in a way that provides emotional satisfaction for the reader. As a young reader I
sighed with contentment upon seeing all the loose ends neatly tied up: orphans found
homes, quarreling lovers made up, once-separated family members were reunited, and the
heroine's worth was finally recognized by those around her. The works of Lucy Maud
Montgomery are "comfort literature" at its best (The Blue Castle is my
personal favorite for romance and reassurance).

Fortunately, over the last twenty years it has become much easier to find Montgomery's
classic stories. In the early 1980s, publishers McClelland & Stewart and Bantam began
reprinting the entire Anne series as well as the Emily series and other of Montgomery's
novels and short stories. Currently, most of Montgomery's novels are again in print as are
several collections of her short stories; in addition you can read her diaries (four
volumes), a handful of biographies, and various scholarly studies of her work. Clearly,
Montgomery's writings are still striking a chord with contemporary readers, authors, and
scholars. It's been fifteen years since I first met L. M. Montgomery and my love for her
books has only grown since then. In fact, she and her works have become something of an
obsession with me; hence the lengthy bibliography below, which should provide plenty of
"scope for imagination" for Montgomery fans and newcomers alike.

--Jeannette Hulick, Editorial Assistant

Books by L. M. Montgomery:

The "Anne" Series (in chronological order by content):

Anne of Green Gables. L. C. Page, 1908.

Anne of Avonlea. L. C. Page, 1909.

Anne of the Island. L. C. Page, 1915.

Anne of Windy Poplars. McClelland & Stewart, 1936.

Anne's House of Dreams. J. B. Lippincott, 1922.

Anne of Ingleside. F. A. Stokes, 1939.

Rainbow Valley. F. A. Stokes, 1919.

Rilla of Ingleside.F. A. Stokes, 1921.

Other novels:

Kilmeny of the Orchard. L. C. Page, 1910.

The Story Girl. L. C. Page, 1911.

The Golden Road. L. C. Page, 1913.

Emily of New Moon. F. A. Stokes, 1923.

Emily Climbs. F. A. Stokes, 1925.

Emily's Quest. F. A. Stokes, 1927.

The Blue Castle. McClelland & Stewart, 1926.

Magic for Marigold. McClelland & Stewart, 1929.

A Tangled Web. McClelland & Stewart, 1931.

Pat of Silver Bush. McClelland & Stewart, 1933.

Mistress Pat: A Novel of Silver Bush. McClelland & Stewart, 1935.

Jane of Lantern Hill. McClelland & Stewart, 1937.

Collections of Short Stories:

Chronicles of Avonlea. L. C. Page, 1912.

Further Chronicles of Avonlea. L. C. Page, 1920.

The Road to Yesterday. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974.

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories; selected by Catherine McLay. McGraw-Hill
Ryerson, 1979.